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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
An Overview of organic pig production
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments
Consumer demand for organic pork is rising. Some pork
producers may wish to capture part of this niche market.
The information on organic pork requirements presented
here is only a general overview. For detailed information,
refer to Canada’s Organic Production Systems — General
Principles and Management Standards or contact a
certifying body that meets your needs for production and
marketing. Organic pork production takes time, hard
work, and facility and management changes to meet all
the requirements. It requires research to determine
whether this type of production system is appropriate for
your operation. It is not for all pork producers.
Using a chemical equilibrium model to predict amendments required to precipitate phosphorus as struvite in liquid swine manure
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Precipitation of phosphate minerals from liquid swine manure is an established means of
reducing the orthophosphate (OP) concentration. This project investigated the usefulness
of a chemical equilibrium model, Visual Minteq, for prescribing the amendments needed to
maximize struvite precipitation from liquid swine manure and thus reduce the OP
phosphorus concentration. The actual concentrations of Mg2+, Ca2+, K+, OP, NH4
+, alkalinity
and pH from a liquid swine manure system were used as inputs to the model. The model
was modified to remove species with extremely low formation rates, because they would
not significantly precipitate in the reaction occurring in a short retention-time process such
as those envisioned for swine manure struvite-formation reactors. Using the model’s
output, a series of 19-L reactors were used to verify the results. Verification results
demonstrated that Visual Minteq can be used to pre-determine the concentration of
amendments required to maximize struvite recovery.
DAYTIME ODOR EMISSION VARIATIONS FROM VARIOUS SWINE BARNS
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Sulfuric odorous compounds emitted from pig-feeding operations
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Environmental impacts of farm scenarios according to five assessment methods
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Influence of nutrient composition on methane production from animal manures and co-digestion with maize and glycerine
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Biogas production from animal manures and co-digestion of energy crops and agricultural wastes is a very promising option to generate renewable energy in the Ukraine. Biogas plants require a targeted nutrient supply to make optimum use of animal manures, energy crops and agricultural wastes. The research project aimed at finding basic principles and data on the metabolic and energetic turnover during anaerobic digestion of animal manures, energy crops and agricultural wastes in agricultural biogas plants. The influence of animal diet and milk yield on the composition of cattle manure and on the methane yield through anaerobic digestion was investigated.
Factor Analysis of Downwind Odours from Livestock Farms
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The livestock industry provides significant benefits to Ontario’s economy; however, the odorous emissions from livestock facilities have caused concern among their non-farming rural neighbours. Measurement and reduction of odour is necessary to maintain a clean environment and to achieve high standards in the production of livestock. Efforts to remediate odour from livestock production facilities have been impeded by the limited understanding of the odour itself and lack of odour evaluation techniques. Livestock odour results from over 165 compounds and their interactions with each other. A variety of factors contribute to their generation, such as relative humidity, wind speed, air temperature, etc. (Zahn et al., 2001). Over the past few decades, research has been conducted to adequately model livestock farm odours, but with little success. These studies have provided evidence that the contributing factors such as environmental conditions should be incorporated into an odour analysis model. However, previous models have only analysed the influence of single factors on odour level and did not investigate their combined effect. Moreover, the relative significance of these contributing factors to odour strength has not been investigated. The aims of this study are to identify the factors that may impact people’s perception of livestock farm odour intensity, and to analyse the effects of the factors on the strength of downwind odour. Odour emissions from livestock operations in Ontario have raised significant public concerns. In this study, downwind odour measurements were conducted during a 7-week period in July and August in 2004. The study involved taking measurements at two poultry farms, six dairy farms, and six pig farms in southern Ontario using both human assessor observed Nasal Ranger field olfactometers and an electronic nose developed in our research laboratory. By analyzing the data collected, it was shown that livestock odour strength is affected by various factors, such as distance to the source and air temperature. Therefore, components-only or single-factor analysis method cannot provide a satisfactory assessment, and a more thorough multi-component and multi-factor analysis is required. However, the results of this research show the promise of using human assessors and Nasal Rangers for downwind odour evaluation but there are a number of disadvantages. For instance, Nasal Ranger field Olfactometer has limited levels of dilution, and is therefore less accurate. Moreover, Nasal Rangers are difficult to overcome the assessors’ personal bias in odour measurement and evaluation, regarding the influences of many factors, such as age and health, and an individual’s background and experience, on the human sense of smell. Therefore, unbiased automatic odour evaluating technologies are desirable. Experimental results showed that the predicted odour strengths by the electronic nose yields high accuracy in comparison to the perceived data by human panel, and proved its capability of producing a qualitative output, its automation, lower operation cost, and greater consistency in odour measurement. However, further research and development are still needed in order to improve the electronic nose techniques for use in livestock farm odour measurements.
Dissolved Organic Carbon in Runoff and Tile-Drain Water under Corn and Forage Fertilized with Hog Manure
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This study compared the effects of mineral fertilizer (MF) and liquid hog manure (LHM) applications on the concentration and molecular size of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released in runoff and tile-drain water under corn (Zea mays L.) and forage cropping systems. It was concluded that incorporation
of corn residues and LHM increased the concentration of
DOC and the relative size of the molecules in surface runoff water,
whereas DOC in tile-drain water was mostly influenced by the cropping
system with relatively more DOC and larger molecules under
forage than corn.